He is a graduate of Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.[3] Calling himself an "accidental journalist", he entered the news industry as a financial analyst for CNBC. After joining Geo TV as a business reporter, he took on more mainstream assignments, becoming a reporter at Express TV and a producer for Dunya TV before joining France 24 in 2012. Two years later, he won the Albert Londres Prize, alongside Julien Fouchet and Sylvain Lepetit, for The Polio War, a documentary on the challenges facing polio eradication efforts in Pakistan.[4]
He is also founder of the SAFE Newsrooms.[5][6]
In January 2018, in Islamabad, gunmen tried to abduct Siddiqui, but he managed to escape.[7][8]
Afterwards, he and his family moved to Paris, where they live in exile. In a Washington Post opinion article, Siddiqui stated that a US intelligence agency informed him of plans by the Pakistani military to assassinate him if he ever returned.[9] In 2020, he opened "The Dissident Club", a bar for exiles and dissidents serving as a refuge and a discussion space. He co-authored an autobiographic bande dessinée graphic novel of the same name that was released in 2023.[10]
